The Oxford History of Britain by Morgan Kenneth O.;

Author:Morgan, Kenneth O.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2010-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Industry and Idleness

The death throes of Jacobitism coincided chronologically with the passing away of pre-industrial society, for conventional accounts of the immense economic growth and change described as the Industrial Revolution locate its birth firmly in the mid-eighteenth century. Yet the period which in retrospect seems to have provided the platform for industrial take-off was widely regarded at the time as one of worrying recession, and continues to present problems of evaluation. In the 1730s and 1740s agricultural prices were exceptionally low; some important manufacturing regions, particularly the old textile centres, suffered serious unemployment and unrest. But there were also more promising developments. Low food prices permitted higher spending on consumer goods and thereby encouraged the newer industries, particularly in the Midlands. If agriculture was frequently depressed by these prices it was also stimulated by them, in East Anglia for example, to increase production. The improved techniques of mixed farming often associated with the age of ‘Turnip’ Townshend do not belong exclusively to this period, but their importance was certainly more widely appreciated. In other sectors there was very marked advance. For instance, the 1730s witnessed one of the most striking developments in the history of transport—the construction of a nation-wide turnpike system. Before 1730, only a handful of turnpike trusts had been established. Most main roads, including the Great North Road beyond Northamptonshire and almost the whole of the Great West Road, depended for their maintenance on those unfortunate parishes which happened to lie in the immediate vicinity. The roads of early Georgian England, subjected to the immense strain of rapidly-growing passenger traffic and ever more burdensome freight services between major centres of consumption, were rightly considered a national disgrace. Turnpike trusts were a neat, if not always popular, solution, which permitted the injection of substantial sums of locally raised capital into repair and maintenance, on the security of a carefully graduated system of tolls. The heyday of the trusts lay in the four middle decades of the century. They testified strongly to the vitality of the provinces, with a large proportion of the new roads in the north and in the West Midlands; by 1770, when the canals were beginning to offer stiff competition for freight, they offered a genuinely national network of relatively efficient transport. The effect on journey times was dramatic. Major provincial centres such as York, Manchester, and Exeter were well over three days’ travel from London in the 1720s; by 1780 they could be reached in not much more than twenty-four hours. Significantly these reductions, which applied to almost all important routes, seem to have stretched contemporary transport technology to the limit; they were subject to little further improvement until about 1820, when Macadam and Telford were to achieve further striking savings.

The development of the turnpikes would not have been possible without a great expansion of inland consumption, trade, and capital. But the internal growth implied in these years was more than matched by expansion overseas. Again contemporary appearances could be misleading. Patriot politicians continued to hold before the public an essentially old-fashioned view of empire.

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